


a rose by any other name

by biblionerd07



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Family Issues, Names, Racism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-02
Updated: 2015-12-02
Packaged: 2018-05-04 12:19:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,723
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5333846
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/biblionerd07/pseuds/biblionerd07
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She has a complicated relationship with names.</p>
            </blockquote>





	a rose by any other name

**Author's Note:**

  * For [psocoptera](https://archiveofourown.org/users/psocoptera/gifts).



> You asked for "Lardo before Samwell? Lardo being bros with Jack? Lardo dating someone? Lardo's secret vice? I don't care, I just really love Lardo." I, too, love Lardo. I was so excited for this prompt and I hope you like it!

Larissa was not actually her name. Her name was Hien. When she was young and being too noisy with her toys, her mother would tell her,

“Your name means _quiet_. You are not quiet.” She would press her lips together and show her mother how quiet she could be, good little Hien who honored her name and didn’t interrupt her brother’s piano practice and didn’t complain when it was her turn.

She started to hate her name when she entered elementary school, since the first little blond boy wrinkled his nose and said, “ _What’s_ your name?” and no amount of repetition eased the look on his face. Every substitute teacher, every confused old lady, every personalized keychain with no Hien on it made her hate her name more.

When she was nine, she was at a friend’s house one afternoon—a friend who had _cable_ and whose mother let her watch TV. They watched The Babysitters Club, a movie her friend had about girls working. Her mother would have probably had conflicting feelings about that, because on the one hand the girls were working hard and being industrious but on the other they had _no_ adult supervision and that was how girls ended up murdered.

There was a girl named Dawn, and she loved Dawn’s hair and her perfectly round eyes. She loved that Dawn was easy to say—no one pronouncing it wrong and then saying, “Isn’t that what I said?” when they were corrected.

“Dawn is a stupid name. It’s just a sunrise,” her friend declared, which was especially hurtful because her name was Rose. “Her real name is Larisa,” her friend read off the back of the video’s box.

“Larisa,” she echoed. It wasn’t as easy as Dawn. But when she started calling herself that at school, no one messed it up. Except her teacher spelled it with two s’s instead of one like the movie box said, but that was okay. A lot of blonde girls had two s’s in their names.

“Why does your teacher call you Larissa?” Her mother asked.

“That’s my name now,” she answered.

“Your name is Hien,” her mother reminded her.

“I want my name to be Larissa.”

“Your name is Hien.” Her mother said it firmer this time.

“My name is Larissa,” she countered.

Her mother said a lot of things about stubbornness and how girls shouldn’t be stubborn because it wasn’t beautiful or becoming and changing her name wasn’t her decision, because she was given a name when she was born and that was her name.

But she dug in her heels, as she rarely did, even when her father got involved and told her she was being disrespectful. That was difficult to say no to, but she thought of that first little blond boy’s confused face and gritted her teeth.

When she turned 18, she had her name legally changed to Larissa, her largest disobedience until she would later pick art as her major in college instead of pre-med or nursing. Her mother didn’t look her in the eye for weeks, but she thought of how nice it would be not to explain to any professors as she started college that she preferred a different name. She wouldn’t have to hear that slight hesitation as the teacher steadied their English tongue to wrap around the Vietnamese syllables, her heart pounding and her lips pressed together tight as she waited to hear how it would be butchered this time.

No one heard her name and asked, “What does it mean?” No one laughed and said, “That makes sense,” when she replied _quiet_. She got to college and she was just Larissa.

Until she wasn’t Larissa anymore—she was Lardo. It was a little strange, getting a name from someone else again when she’d named herself half a life ago. She hadn’t liked the first name someone else gave her; she worried about what this one would mean.

“Why Lardo?” She asked, and then she was treated to an exuberant, curse-filled explanation of hockey and nicknames and her first name.

“It’s from Larissa,” Shitty pointed out.

“But it’s a nickname,” Holster chimed in.

“Oh, I thought that was my real name now,” she deadpanned.

“It is to us,” Ransom told her, very seriously.

“You can still be Larissa if you want,” Jack countered. “If you don’t like Lardo we won’t call you that.” He gave his teammates a look, informing them of this truth as much as her.

“I don’t mind,” she heard herself say. “I kind of like it.”

Because every name came with expectations, but the expectations for _Lardo_ were expectations she didn’t mind—Lardo knew all the answers. Lardo could solve problems. Lardo could drink with the boys and beat them at beer pong. Lardo was fun and cool and kind of mysterious.

She was Lardo for years, and she was happy about it. Lardo was different than Larissa; Larissa was sometimes stretched thin by deadlines and art projects and _sequins_ , but that was okay. When Larissa needed a break, she could go to the Haus and be Lardo instead, who could slouch low in a chair on the roof and pass a joint back and forth with Shitty until everything in the world went soft.

Shitty knew about names—he hated his own name so much he chose to go by _Shitty_ full-time, for crying out loud. He knew about names and meanings and expectations. It didn’t take him long to tell her his real name, despite his hatred and secrecy of it. She wrinkled her nose a little.

“It doesn’t fit you,” she said, and his face lit up so bright at her words butterflies filled her stomach.

It took her longer to tell him the name she was born with. It took almost until he was gone. They were on the roof, not smoking up but just looking at the stars, and she turned to him and said,

“My name is Hien.”

He tilted his head a little. “Hien?” He repeated. “Did I say it right?”

She felt a warm little curl in her stomach. He had, and he cared to. “Yeah,” she told him. “You got it.”

“Your driver’s license says Larissa,” he pointed out, not quite a question.

“I changed it when I was eighteen.” Practically the minute she’d turned eighteen. Shitty didn’t ask how her parents felt about that or why she’d done it. He just nodded and tipped his head back to look at the stars again.

“It means quiet,” she pressed on, not sure why she suddenly felt the need to share all this. She’d gone so long without telling anyone that it was tumbling out of her now. “Fits, huh?”

He shrugged. “Not really.”

“Not really?” She echoed, surprised. “I don’t talk much.”

He shrugged again. He might’ve smoked some without her. “You don’t talk much, but you’re not really quiet. You’re all small and shit, but you’re _big_. Like, life-wise. You have a big, loud _essence_.”  
  
She laughed, because now she definitely knew he’d smoked without her. He always got overly philosophical when he was high. They dropped it, and she forgot about it for a while in the stress of her show and losing two of her best friends to graduation. It wasn’t until later, after summer break had ended and she’d moved her things into the Haus, into his old room, that Shitty brought it up again.

They were Skyping, him bare-chested with his hair hanging past his shoulders, and the conversation lulled a little because it hurt, talking to him when he was far away. Even if far away only actually meant Cambridge.

“You know,” he started, a little timid. “I looked up Hien. It said it means quiet but it also said gentle. So.”

She swallowed. “What?”

He looked a little sheepish. “I just mean—well, you _are_ gentle. You can be harsh as fuck sometimes, sure, and you can kick my ass, but…” He sighed a little. “I think gentle works for you.”

She took a minute to process that, to think about the fact that he’d taken her comments she’d made when he was stoned and didn’t think he was even listening and gave it so much more thought, months and months later.

“Everyone always says quiet fits me,” she told him, and her voice was a little softer than usual, a little bruised, because everyone at school said she was quiet but her own mother never seemed to see it.

“I already told you, you’re not quiet,” he reminded her. “But I think you are gentle. Gentler than you give yourself credit for.”

“So you’re saying I should change my name back?” She asked, raising an eyebrow. He _pfft_ ed at her.

“You know I wouldn’t say that,” he said. “Names have power, brah, and I dig that you picked your own power.”

She snorted a little. That was a Shitty answer.

“I’m just saying,” he went on. “You don’t have to be weighed down by the quiet thing. Because there’s the gentle thing, too.”

They moved on to other topics, but after they hung up she spent a long time looking up at the ceiling—it was shaking a little because Ransom and Holster were wrestling around and yelling about ghosts again—and thinking about what he’d said.

She’d always taken her name as a rebuke, a highlight of her shortcoming, a reason to shut her mouth. They were so opposed to hearing her speak they named her quiet. It was what she was supposed to be.

But maybe she’d ignored the meaning they’d given her and grabbed onto the other meaning. They named her _quiet_ , but she turned it around, she made it her own, she was _gentle_. She’d chosen her own meaning, just like she’d chosen her own name and her own major and her own job.

She rolled over onto her stomach and pressed a smile into her pillow, her chest warm and calm. It wasn’t some magic meaning that was going to make her change her name back and fix her relationship with her parents. But it made even the name that had chafed her whole life fit better, gave her back some of her control.

She hadn’t chosen the name, but she could choose what it meant.


End file.
